Society news & features p2

We all know the Department of Health worries deeply about the state of the NHS and seldom spares a thought for social services. But we are wrong, says David Behan, who stepped down last week after two years as chief inspector of social care.

Nurse-turned-photographer Hal Satterthwaite is finishing off an unusual community art project that has involved taking hundreds of photographs of local people and culminates this week in a huge, open-air exhibition, One Thousand Faces of Walthamstow.

Society news & features p3

The government has now been given the go-ahead to forcibly send Zimbabwean asylum seekers back home. One refugee, who fled when militia threatened to kill him, tells Alison Benjamin of his fight to stay in the UK.

Society news & features p4

Mary O'Hara: There is an alarming air of deja vu when, just two months after the publication of one report showing that mental health services in England are being cut to compensate for financial strains caused by the £500m deficit across other parts of the NHS, a second report reaches similar conclusions.

Society news & features p5

The anti-abortion lobby has had some success in influencing attitudes, but the director of the UK's only pro-choice group tells Mary O'Hara that the 'dangerous' tactics have not put her off fighting for women's rights.

Christopher Manthorp: In times of war, there is always a focus on how children suffer, but older people suffer at least as much. Children, if they are spared, have an almost unlimited potential for picking themselves up and starting again. Older people, on the other hand, are less mentally and physically resilient.

Society news & features p8

Oliver Tickell: Global warming, says Tony Blair, is "the world's greatest environmental challenge", and renewable energy is one of the main weapons to combat it. So would you expect his government to grab hundreds of millions of pounds from Britain's fledgling renewable electricity industry?